Border

Thursday October 14, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 14, 2021

US to reopen Mexico Canada land borders for fully vaccinated travellers

The US has said it will reopen its land borders with Mexico and Canada to fully vaccinated travellers from November.

August 28, 2021

It means those sealed out of the US because of the pandemic can enter – for any reason – using land and ferry crossing points.

Unvaccinated travellers will still be banned from entering the US from Mexico and Canada by land. Air travel is allowed with a negative Covid test.

The US has curbed travel from Mexico and Canada since March 2020.

“We are pleased to be taking steps to resume regular travel in a safe and sustainable manner,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

Currently, most non-US citizens who have been to the UK, China, India, South Africa, Iran, Brazil and a number of European countries within the past 14 days are not allowed into the US.

July 22, 2021

But those rules will also be lifted in November, the Biden administration announced last month.

Essential travellers, including students, truck drivers, US citizens and healthcare workers were never banned from crossing land borders. However from January 2022, they will also need to show proof of vaccination to get into the US from Mexico or Canada.

“This approach will provide ample time for essential travellers… to get vaccinated,” the Department of Homeland Security said.

An exact date in November has not yet been announced, but will be “very soon”, an official told Reuters news agency.

April 18, 2020

Canada opened its border to fully vaccinated travellers from the US on 9 August. Mexico’s border has remained open throughout the whole pandemic.

A controversial law which allows the US to swiftly expel undocumented migrants to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in holding facilities will stay in place, US media reports. The border legislation, known as Title 42, has cut off access to asylum for hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to enter from Mexico.

News of the reopening has drawn praise from US lawmakers with constituencies along the Canadian border.

Among them was Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ Senate Majority Leader.

Redbubble Merch

“Kudos to President Biden for doing the right thing and increasing cross border travel between Canada and the US,” he said.

“This reopening will be welcome news to countless businesses, medical providers, families, and loved ones that depend on travel across the northern border,” added New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

The announcement of new rules in September was a surprise to many – coming days after the US government said it was not the right time to lift restrictions.

The US has recorded some 44.5 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, and more than 716,000 deaths. (BBC) 

 

Thursday July 22, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 22, 2021

U.S. border to remain closed until at least Aug. 21

The U.S. land border will remain closed to non-essential travel until at least Aug. 21, according to a renewal order issued by the American government Wednesday.

June 23, 2021

In a notice pre-published in the U.S. Federal Register, the U.S. government says that while vaccination rates have improved, opening the land border to non-essential travel still poses too great a risk.

“Given the outbreak and continued transmission and spread of COVID-19 within the United States and globally, the Secretary has determined that the risk of continued transmission and spread of the virus associated with COVID-19 between the United States and Canada poses an ongoing specific threat to human life or national interests,” says the U.S. government notice.

The new order expires one minute before midnight on Aug. 21.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement that offered little additional explanation.

April 18, 2020

“To decrease the spread of COVID-19, including the Delta variant, the United States is extending restrictions on non-essential travel at our land and ferry crossings with Canada and Mexico through August 21, while ensuring the continued flow of essential trade and travel,” wrote DHS spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández.

“DHS is in constant contact with Canadian and Mexican counterparts to identify the conditions under which restrictions may be eased safely and sustainably.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was also tight-lipped.

“We rely on the guidance of our health and medical experts, not on the actions of other countries,” Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Cincinnati.

“We created these working groups so we can have an open line of communication, discussion on what the criteria look like, what measures needed to be met. Those are ongoing and of course, we continue to be briefed internally as well.”

June 27, 2015

The American order comes only a few days after the Canadian government announced its land border would open to fully vaccinated U.S. citizens on Aug. 9 and to fully vaccinated travellers from other countries on Sept. 7.

Speaking to reporters today, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said he has been working closely with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who informed him of the U.S. government’s plan to keep its land border closed to non-essential travel.

“There are a number of considerations that I know that the American government is currently undertaking with respect to their borders and that work will continue,” he said.

Blair said the U.S. policy doesn’t affect Canada’s decision to open its border next month.

“Our responsibility, of course, is to look after the best interests of Canadians and to follow the advice of our public health officials,” he said. “That’s precisely what we have done.” (CBC) 

 

Wednesday June 23, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday June 23, 2021

The retreat of North Americanism: Canadians and Americans keep moving further apart

Back in the day, when Canada signed the landmark free trade agreement with the United States, there was a good deal of fear and loathing.

February 6, 2001

The Progressive Conservatives led the way on reciprocity and the Jean Chrétien Liberals, as former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy recalled in a phone call this week, reluctantly climbed aboard. Like many, he worried the border would weaken, that continentalism had won out.

Then, deus ex machina, beginning with 9/11, expectations were overturned. The response to the terrorist horror – with many Americans believing the hijackers had come through Canada – was to fortify the world’s longest undefended border. Passports became necessary.

A bitter split with the George W. Bush administration ensued over Canada’s refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq. Later, under the Republicans, came the populist explosion on the right. Donald Trump treated Canada more like an adversary than an ally. His medieval empire, his attack on truth, democracy and decency, soured the opinion of Canadians on America like never before.

April 30, 2021

Maybe the bigger the border, Canadians reasoned, the better.

Then, taking the boundary divide to the max, came the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, which had the effect of cocooning Canada, shutting down the border to all but essential traffic. The closure has endured more than a year and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in no hurry to end it. He’s been hearing from his public: Keep the Americans out.

It doesn’t make sense, Maryscott Greenwood, the North Carolinian who is head of the Canadian American Business Council, said in an interview. “You’re saying vaccines don’t matter.” Canadians shouldn’t underestimate the opposition and frustration this has provoked in Washington. She’s hearing from top officials, she said, that the U.S. is considering opening its side of the border fully on June 21. If Mr. Trudeau and company don’t respond in kind, so be it. To heck with them.

October 10, 2020

All said, there’s been quite a turn since the heady days of free trade. Instead of continental cohesion, much division. Instead of a border thinner than ever, one thicker than ever. Instead of a new North Americanism, a retreat to a more fragmented mindset.

“The heyday of the Canada-U.S. relationship has come and gone,” said Christopher Kirkey, director of the Center for the Study of Canada at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. “The trend is toward more divergence than convergence.”

In addition to the advent of Mr. Trump, the calamities of 9/11 and the coronavirus, there were other factors. Free trade, as Mr. Kirkey observed, coincided with the end of the Cold War. That termination meant Canada needed the U.S. less and the U.S. needed Canada less. The special relationship between the two countries that was built in the period 1945 to 1990 became too difficult to sustain and it isn’t, in his view, about to be restored by Joe Biden’s protectionist Democrats. “I can tell you Canada is hardly on the radar screen in Washington. Let’s be blunt about that.”

 

July 14, 2020

Michael Adams, the head of the Environics Institute who has been surveying Canadian attitudes toward Americans for decades, concurs that the North Americanism envisaged with free trade is pretty much kaput. In the post-Second World War years, Canadians used to look up to the U.S. in so many ways, he said. “It used to be like the utopia.” Now, given the hold Mr. Trump’s populist authoritarianism has on such a large swath of the population, “it’s more like the dystopia.”

 
Of course, as was rightly noted by Goldy Hyder, chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada, economic dependence on the American market is here to stay, despite any other decoupling tendencies. The Trudeau government better be careful, he warned. With companies reviewing their supply chains in the wake of the pandemic, more investments will remain in the U.S. if the Canadian border poses too much of a barrier.

March 13, 2021

If the Liberals were following the science, they’d quickly open the border, he added, but instead they’ve been following the politics (their polling). He said Mr. Biden told Mr. Trudeau in Europe that he promised freedom for Americans by July 4 and that opening the Canadian border is part of the deal.

The Prime Minister will take his sweet time in reciprocating. Continental consolidation isn’t as big a priority as it was before the century turned. Since that time, it’s become increasingly clear how different Canadians are. Rather than welded to an American block, they much prefer their own. (Globe & Mail) 

 

Saturday May 29, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday May 29, 2021

Government Advisory Panel Calls For An End To Canadian Quarantine Hotels

As the US continues its reopening after COVID-19 pandemic measures, Canada’s restrictions are gradually lifting in some provinces as vaccination numbers increase. Nonetheless, the controversial quarantine hotels are still in place as a precaution against the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus — a requirement that some experts are now calling upon the government to lift.

November 28, 2020

A new report has been released from the COVID-19 Testing and Screening Expert Advisory Panel, a group providing guidance to the federal government, detailing these recommendations. “The current requirement for all air travellers to quarantine in government-authorized accommodations should be discontinued,” writes the panel of doctors and advisors. “However, travellers subject to quarantine must provide a suitable quarantine plan for approval and then adhere to this plan. If the traveller does not have a suitable quarantine plan, they should be required to adhere to an alternative one (for example, in designated quarantine facilities).”

Other factors that play into the recommendation include the administrative costs that these hotels use (and the resources drawn from other pandemic response), as well as the cost to travelers themselves. “Travellers face an added cost (up to $2000 CAD per person), time commitment and a burden to book government-authorized accommodation,” notes the report, which points out that some travelers are bypassing the hotels by crossing into Canada by land from the US. There have been cases where prospective visitors have even falsified test result paperwork to avoid the quarantine (charges were later laid).

February 13, 2021

Introduced earlier this year, the quarantine hotels, meant to reduce casual, non-essential travel to or from Canada, have been largely successful in their intended goal. The mandatory three night stay at a pre-booked quarantine hotel while awaiting results of a PCR (polymerase chain reactions) test discouraged many from flying: February data from the Canadian Border Security Agency showed a decrease of almost 55 per cent in terms of passengers flying into Canada after the quarantine hotel restrictions were implemented. During that month, the Canadian government also began routing all international flights, including those from the US that had been previously exempted, through four airports: Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. (Forbes) 

 

Friday April 30, 2021

April 30, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 30, 2021

Cabinet’s ability to award Buy American exemptions ‘strenuously limited,’ Biden says

President Joe Biden set some Canadian pulses racing again Wednesday with more tough Buy American talk, telling Congress he has “strenuously limited” cabinet members from granting exemptions to the 88-year-old protectionist doctrine. 

February 23, 2021

In the same breath, however, the speech marking Biden’s first 100 days as commander-in-chief offered a measure of comfort by suggesting Buy American would not offend the terms of trade deals like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. 

“American tax dollars are going to be used to buy American products, made in America, to create American jobs. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, and it will be in this administration,” Biden declared. 

The notion of keeping U.S. government spending on American soil, a philosophy that dates back to 1933, will be the “one principle” guiding the $2.2-trillion infrastructure package dubbed the American Jobs Plan, he added. 

“I might note, parenthetically, that does not violate any trade agreement. It’s been the law since the ’30s,” Biden said through sustained applause in the House chamber, where COVID-19 allowed only a relative handful of lawmakers to attend. 

September 17, 2020

“I’ve made it clear to all my cabinet people: their ability to give exemptions has been strenuously limited. It will be American products.”

Much of what Biden said on the subject, including mention of trade agreements and cabinet members, did not appear in the prepared version of his remarks distributed to reporters before the speech. 

And it offered little solace or clarity for Canadian stakeholders still smarting from the punishing steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by Biden’s stridently protectionist predecessor, Donald Trump. 

“Those policies continue to concern us — ‘Made in America’ failed to embrace the integrated nature that we have in the steel business,” said Catherine Cobden, head of the Canadian Steel Producers Association. 

“Protectionism between neighbours and allies hurts everyone. We’re really hopeful that that’s not the way this plays out.”

The picture is likely to become more clear by midsummer, when an internal review of the existing rules — including how domestic content is defined and whether information and communication technology should be covered — is due. (Canadian Press)